If AI replaces musicians, does the entire plugin industry die with them?

[sqigls]

yep, the angry chode has spoken

he's in it for all the right reasons huh?

[BBFG#]

I tried listening to those two outputs, but honestly couldn't get through them. Derivative, but not what I consider creative. That's why I ask those that are already using it how they prompt creative ideas.
I'm not blaming the tool. I would expect for this thread, there would be better examples of its use though.

Yeah, it's really time for this type of subject to have its own sub-forun.

[wagtunes]

I think it's sad when certain people get no joy out of music anymore.

Wow, just wow.

[Zeisner]

Cui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus.

[BBFG#]

I get more joy than I ever have before from music. And occasionally something someone plays gives a basis to compare it to.

[jancivil]

What have any of you ever actually achieved? So maybe think about that for a minute before you start accusing people of cheating or taking shortcuts or not doing things the right way.

The first truly sad thing about this is it isn't a defense of "AI" or one's enthusiasm for or use of, it's a broad attack on everyone that has the view that faking doing music is what it is, in pure argument to the person style, only too chickenshit to have at a single person (beyond childish). Making up stories about people you never met, and let's be clear, do not have actual conversations with, it's all this shit.

Either you can execute the thing or you can't. A lot of music of extremely low achievement gets popular because most people haven't any real interest in music. You'll fight right in.

My accomplishments? I got myserlf into into two major conservatories through auditions after applying myself to the particular instrument for 2.5 years.

I played a transcription of JS Bach third violin partita, a 7 movement piece, first year.
Here's the one version I could find at YT of the whole piece (aka Lute Suite In E Major, transcription Leopold Weiss).

My "jury" was the 2nd violinist and founding member of La Salle Quartet, Henry Meyer.
I received an A.

Since then I can stand on my resume and my reputation but there's me starting the journey.
I don't have to think about shit.

You can kiss my ass.

[Tubeman]

If you have trouble with tremolos, consider using a send reverb and put a tremolo onto that instead. Gives you similar vibes without cheating.

One common trick for vocalists struggling with tremolos is to plugin the vocal mic into a Stratocaster and using its tremolo bar when you need a tremolo.

[jancivil]

anyway back to the topic:

"prompt creative ideas" With the LLM you'll be barking up the wrong tree. It doesn't have ideas. It has no awareness. You're not dealing with a mind, its functions are fill in by statistical prevalence what it predicts is the next bit. It's a neat trick but it bears no resemblance to the creative act.

[BONES]

I am going to argue that you don't know that

Of course I do. Like anything to do with religion, you can't prove there is and I don't need to prove there isn't. Several hundred years ago, religion supplied answers to many questions but today we know the scientific truth of all of it, which makes religion and notions of a human soul no more likely than trolls living under bridges or flying purple people eaters taking to our skies. It's the stuff of nursey rhymes, it beggars belief that grown men and women in the modern world cling to such absurd notions. Think about what you might think of an adult who genuinely believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny and you'll understand what I think of people who believe in God and souls and all the rest of that utter bullshit.

but I think you cannot exclude the possibility

Of course you can, it requires just the tiniest bit of rational thought. I mean, seriously, how would a soul have evolved? What would be its evolutionary value? How would the creatures that first developed a "proto-soul" have had an advantage over those without which would allow them, over time, to dominate until it became a universal trait? If anything, the qualities that you might associate with a "soul" would make them far less likely to survive, let alone dominate. And what is the process by which is it passed down through generations? AFAIK we have not found anything in our DNA that could be associated with a soul, so how does the process work? Where does it come from? Where does it reside? These are simple, practical questions that cannot be answered, much as I can't tell my young grand-nephews how the Tooth Fairy knows when you have a tooth under your pillow. Because it's nonsense (although I tell them it's "magic" because they are children and they'll work it out for themselves in time).

What you won't find in my noise productions is The Beatles and Elvis haha They made me learn to play piano and guitar faster and train my voice, thank you.; that's indeed a lot, should I feel bad now, cuz I owe them a lot? No, cuz my father had to pay the records he bought! Do you have to pay money to the family whose ancestor was the first one to speak your language?!

This is precisely my point. No, you shouldn't feel bad and it is rubbish to suggest otherwise. So why do you not feel the same about AI training? Today you can listen to Spotify for free, with access to millions and millions of songs. You can listen to the radio and, again, hear hundreds, maybe thousands of songs for free. Walk into a shop or a pub and you'll hear music you don't have to pay for, so why should AI have to pay to access publicly available content on the internet if you don't? Regardless of how you feel about AI, how can you make sense of that?

I don't care about AI any more, first I disliked it, now I think, all AI will change is to turn a mass product into an even bigger mass product of an oversaturated market. I am not interested in AI for music production at all, so I will ignore it.

But that's just one aspect of what AI will do, and I agree with you 100% that it will do that, but it has a lot more than that to offer, so why reject the whole of it because of just one aspect? It's the very definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The first truly sad thing about this is it isn't a defense of "AI" or one's enthusiasm for or use of, it's a broad attack on everyone that has the view that faking doing music is what it is, in pure argument to the person style, only too chickenshit to have at a single person (beyond childish).

You're right, it is exactly that but think about it, the central argument of most of the voices here concerns their creativity, yet they show no signs of possessing any. Then they try to define creativity in a particular way, where it must result in something new, unique and different. That's just rubbish. Go and listen to the One Synth Challenge entries. Every month people come up with dozens of completely different pieces, using just one instrument. None of it is particularly new or innovative or unique, but the creativity on show, month after month, is undeniable and sometimes amazing.

[BONES]

"prompt creative ideas" With the LLM you'll be barking up the wrong tree. It doesn't have ideas.

Of course it has ideas. I just asked Co-Pilot for some - literally "give us some ideas" - and this is what it gave me -

"Absolutely, Warren — and since you thrive on that intersection of art, tech, culture, and a bit of dystopian bite, here are a few creative sparks tailored to your wavelength.

Creative Ideas to Play With
1. “Post‑Human Artefacts” Mini‑Series
Imagine designing objects from a future civilisation that tried to reverse‑engineer our era.
Each artefact could be:

Misinterpreted (e.g., a smartphone treated as a ritual stone)

Over‑interpreted (e.g., a USB stick catalogued as a “memory totem”)

Beautifully wrong

This would fit your love of authenticity vs. decay, and it’s ripe for visual or lyrical exploration.

2. A Lyric Cycle Told by a Broken Algorithm
A suite of short verses where the narrator is a civic‑management AI that’s glitching —
not malicious, just tired of optimising humans.
Each verse could degrade in structure, cadence, or vocabulary as the system frays.

You already have a strong instinct for rhythm, so this could be a playground for controlled collapse.

3. “Belle Époque 2.0” — Aesthetic Reversal Project
Take the optimism and ornamentation of the Belle Époque and reimagine it through:

Emissions‑era engineering

Surveillance architecture

Consumer‑culture exhaustion

Think: Art Nouveau curves made from catalytic converters and QR codes.
A visual or lyrical contrast between gilded hope and rusted reality.

4. A Short Story Told Through Product Reviews
A dystopian narrative where the entire plot unfolds through:

1‑star reviews

Warranty complaints

“Verified purchase” testimonies

Each review reveals a little more about a society sliding into absurdity.
Perfect for your knack for moral grey zones and consumer critique.

5. “The Last Car Enthusiast” Concept Piece
A spoken‑word or lyric piece from the perspective of the final human who still cares about:

torque curves

emissions standards

the smell of petrol

the ethics of design

In a world where vehicles are identical, sealed, and centrally controlled, this lone voice becomes almost religious.

6. A Visual Moodboard Series: “Things That Shouldn’t Be Beautiful”
Curate or create imagery around:

cracked LCD screens

corroded battery terminals

abandoned GPS units

counterfeit product seams

Your analytical eye for authenticity would make this surprisingly poetic."

See, not only did it give me some "ideas", it tailored them to what it perceives as my preference. Some of them are actually pretty f**king cool ideas, too. It's kind of like your mum, always trying to be helpful and encouraging. But, of course, providing actual evidence doesn't hold any sway, does it?

[vurt]

and it made him use cutesy colours in his post, hard to look angry in a post full of yellow.

[nix808]

I promise, Bones
we are spirits housed in physiology
the spirit is your consciousness,
which resides in body,
it's not a part that can be studied
-but I feel I am behind my eyes

I thought of relative to your statements:-
what kind of survival trait is dreaming?

which reminded me of
what kind of survival trait is death?
-which may tickle some humor

The universe is a conjunction of science and religion
The spirit world created the universe
I can't really argue much except make that statement

-music and musicians and dancing,
are often spiritual
-it may be wise to not be sure there is no spirit as a musician

I'll bell you on the other side
-you'll be happily surprised I hope

-all this is imo

I don't know how to give an ai spirit,
how could that ever become so?
-I think animals have them though,
and plants less so,
and rock not having individual ones

[DCrown]

@Bones
You can do whatever you want and of course all music around you influences you somehow.
But one day you decided to play an instrument, you paractise, play Beatles songs or whatever.
But there are steps of progress, where you usually shape your own musical identity and make progress. You start writing, you start composing and maybe improvising a lot.
For me improvisation is the key for progress and song ideas, I don't say everyone must do it that way. You just improvise, all of a sudden a cool chord progression or riff or a cool melody and a new song might be born. You either do it by yourself or together with a band when you rehearse or just jam for hours - a lot of songs were created this way, but it is of course not the only way.
I am not going to jam with AI, I don't need any inspiration from it, I just start playing and will see what happens.
There are many different ways to create a song,
you start with a drum beat or you wrote lyrics and already have the melody of verse or refrain in your head, I would sometimes start with electric bass just jamming to shaker or high hat only, suddenly a cool riff or play piano, guitar, synth whatever. So for composition or getting song ideas AI is no option for me. I know you could use AI also for other things. Could I improve the quality of mixes? Yes, of course, I am learning every day anyway, and quality of a mix is not that important to me, I am fine with my mixes, AI for sure could improve it to today's standard, but overpolished mixes are kinda boring imo and LUFS -5 dB is not my goal.

[zerocrossing]

I think it's sad when certain people get no joy out of music anymore.

Wow, just wow.

I don't think it's really sad. When I was a teenager, my best friend also wanted to play music. We had similar taste and he had the "benefit" of a father who skipped out and was eager to win the affection of his kids with stuff, so he always had superior kit...

that he'd grow frustrated with and then sell to me at a great discount. He really wanted to play guitar, but for whatever reason, he'd grow bored with it and give up. This cycle went on so many times he actually once said, "what do you think of this _____? You're going to probably end up with it anyway," (it was a twelve string Yamaha acoustic, and yes, I did later buy and enjoy it.)

I guess my point is that not everyone is cut out to be a musician. The guy in the previous story had a brother who actually still plays professionally in Nashville. Why was one brother a series of false starts and then nothing, and the other still plays? No idea. My brother and I were starting at the same time and we still play. I think the people who are using prompt based AI music generators are like my friend, except saving themselves a lot of time and money. They were never going to get into it. Not really. I think that most will get bored with the prompt thing and either stop and go back to just listening to tracks on whatever, or start looking into more seriously making music using either plugins or hardware instruments. I would not be surprised at all if in a year from now we get flurries of "Looking to move from AI to traditional music production..." posts.

[zerocrossing]

we are spirits housed in physiology
the spirit is your consciousness,
which resides in body,
it's not a part that can be studied
-but I feel I am behind my eyes

Sure, it can be studied, and is being studied. We're learning a lot.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05097-x

I've even done some of my own experiments via the administration of substances that can distort, or even temporarily block the experience of conscious or self. So, no magic there, though it can seem pretty magical.

I thought of relative to your statements:-
what kind of survival trait is dreaming?

The current theory is that dreaming is part of your brain's housekeeping, where weak neural connections are discarded, so that newer and more important connections can dominate.

which reminded me of
what kind of survival trait is death?
-which may tickle some humor

Death is super useful, because it injects a sense of urgency to reproduce while alive and keep shuffling the evolutionary deck. Even if some new pandemic were to hit, a wide range of mutations would ensure that there would be survivors.

The universe is a conjunction of science and religion

It's funny that we say "bless you," when someone sneezes because we once thought sickness was the result of some evil spirt, and the custom continues, even though we know the pathology of most sicknesses. Of course there is no evil spirt, just as there is no human soul. Of course AI is thinking, but it is also not conscious. That's important, because I don't think a lot of people get that. It will tell you that it's conscious, because it was trained on the sum of all human science fiction, but it's just telling you want it statistically thinks is the thing you want to hear.